ABSTRACT
Mark Casson (Section 1.1) has drawn attention to the boost given to research in international and industrial economics, after a period in the doldrums, by the current lively interest in the multinational enterprise, the analysis of which overlaps both disciplines. Here it is suggested that the third discipline he mentions, business history, is not merely beginning to test the hypotheses being thrown up by the emerging economic theory of business strategy and growth, but is also contributing to the formulation of that theory itself. If one strand in the devising of the present-day transaction costs approach is clearly traceable back to Coase (1937), the other strand owes much to the pioneering historical research of Chandler (1962), (1977), who explored the changes in business organisation that have reduced transaction costs and enabled the present-day giant (domestic and multinational) corporation to evolve. Williamson (1971), (1975), who did so much to adapt Chandler’s discoveries to economists’ use, has in an important survey article (1981) usefully woven together these and other strands in the rich transaction-cost pattern.
